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December 17, 2005

TypePad hoses me - I'm outta here

Some readers know yesterday was Black Friday. I was really looking forward to it as it had been a cracking couple of days. Then disaster struck. Six Apart the developers and hosting provider for TypePad, the platform on which this site sits had a major outtage that lasted 18 hours.

This is not the place to argue the ins and outs, rights and wrongs. I know they were working hard to resolve it and I know execs were over-run with calls, email etc. Irrelevant in my eyes. This was the second outtage in several weeks. This time it wasn't a scalability issue but what to me sounds like basic housekeeping gone badly wrong.

This is a sure sign of an immature business that has ignored or not understood the issues of scaling up Internet service based applications. Fortunately, switching costs are minimal though time consuming. So by the time you see the nextr post, I hope to have transferred services. In the meantime, you'll need to have a quick look through the Recent Posts in the sidebar because it looks like 6A hosed the email subscriptions reader as well somewhere along the way. Great.

I'm talking to the feed people about this to see what can be done.

I'm glad I didn't advise anyone to use this platform except to play behind the firewall. Pity I didn't take my own advice!

Truly a nightmare, Dennis. I can well understand your anger especially in light of your posts in recent days and the connections you were making as a result.

While I'm perhaps more sanguine about this latest service disruption, I do believe Six Apart will now face a crisis of confidence in many customers' perceptions of the TypePad service and its reliability.

I've seen a few posts out there this morning talking about server crashes, how it's not uncommon, shit happens, etc, etc.

I suspect that's absolutely of zero comfort to the majority of people using TypePad. What they want to hear is the kind of explanation that addresses their worries, not sounding like arrogant lame excuses.

What Six Apart themselves say and do next will be important to their credibility, what customers think about TypePad and preventing a migration away.

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